Equity firm pumps $36 million into Voalte

Monday

Feb 24, 2014 at 5:27 PM

The surging Sarasota County company uses smartphones to enhance hospital communications.

By JOHN HIELSCHERjohn.hielscher@heraldtribune.com

In one of the region's top recent financing deals, a private equity firm has pumped in $36 million for an ownership stake in Voalte, a surging company that uses smartphones to enhance hospital communications.

Bedford Funding deployed part of its $1.4 billion warchest to boost Voalte's 5-year-old foray into mobile communications for the health industry.

Calling it a “significant milestone,” Sarasota-based Voalte said the capital infusion will help it compete in the mobile health industry that is expected to grow to $10 billion by 2018.

“The value of smartphones in health care is undeniable,” said company president and co-founder Trey Lauderdale. “This investment also provides us with the resources to grow our company, further expand our engineering team, and build out our services and support.”

Not many companies in Southwest Florida have attracted that kind of attention from deep-pocketed investors.

Last year Rapid Pathogen Screening Inc., a company developing diagnostic tests for doctors' offices, received $6.25 million in capital from Mallitz Investment Group. Both are based in Lakewood Ranch.

More than two years ago METI, a Sarasota maker of lifelike human patient simulators, took a $130 million buyout from CAE Inc., a Canadian company looking for a toehold in that field.

Bedford, based in White Plains, N.Y., provides long-term capital to growing technology businesses with a focus on the healthcare IT sector. It was formed in 2006 with $400 million and in 2012 raised another $1 billion from investors.

“We are delighted to invest in the future development of an organization that has implemented clinical communication solutions for improved patient care in some of the most prestigious hospitals in the country,” Charles Jones, Bedford managing partner, said in a statement.

Voalte — pronounced “volt” — filed a “sales of securities without registration” form last week with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

That form did not identify Bedford as the buyer of $35.9 million in equity securities.

Mark Huey, chief executive of the Economic Development Corp. of Sarasota County, said Bedford's ownership purchase is one of the largest involving a regional company.

“It's rather unprecedented,” Huey said. “These are investors who have an eye not just on Voalte but on the whole healthcare IT space. For them to pinpoint Voalte really acknowledges the company is positioned for significant growth.”

The 130-employee Voalte developed smartphone-based communications systems to improve coordination at healthcare facilities.

Sarasota Memorial Hospital was a test site, and today more than 35,000 caregivers use the Voalte One application, including at such top-notch operations as Massachusetts General Hospital and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

Voalte users communicate via voice calls and text messages and receive alarms and alerts. Smartphones also can link with a hospital's electronic medical record system and act as a scanner for barcode medication administration.

Lauderdale says the company has contracts with medical centers in large cities and with small community hospitals as far removed as Barrow, Alaska.

“And we still have hundreds of thousands of pagers, badges and legacy VoIP phones to replace in hospitals throughout the country,” he said.

The company, which received a $250,000 grant from Sarasota County in 2011 to support growth, hired more than 50 new workers in 2013 and may have 250 by the end of this year, chief experience officer Oscar Callejas told the Herald-Tribune in December.

“We did the same amount of business in the first six months of this year (2013) as we did in the first 52 months of our existence,” he said.

The company remains privately owned and has not released sales and earnings figures.